CNCC hires cosmo teacher

Caddy brings 16 years of experience to new program

Colorado Northwestern Community College has hired a coordinator for its new Cosmetology program that will begin next month.

Tracy Caddy will be overseeing the cosmetology and nail technician courses that CNCC-Craig is offering for the first time this spring.

For the last 12 years, Caddy has lived in Grand Junction with her husband, Greg, and their three children, where she was an instructor at the Academy of Beauty.

She also taught at the Delta Vocational/Technical Institute, and commuted from Grand Junction to Denver to acquire her teaching certification."I worked for nine years to have the opportunity to teach," Caddy said. "I love teaching more than anything else. The only reason I went to beauty school was so that I could eventually teach."

Caddy has been a stylist for 16 years, and an instructor for the last seven. The opportunity to guide a program is one of the main reasons Caddy joined the CNCC staff.

"This gives me the opportunity to be the director of a school and implement some of my own ideas," she said. "A lot of programs will teach someone what they need to know to be certified, but they don't prepare them for working in a real salon, what actually goes in the business. "Our program will teach work ethics, and prepare them for everything that's actually done in a salon."

The CNCC-Craig program will have its students working in an fully-functional, customer-orientated salon.

The students will be supervised by an instructor while working on customers, similar to how a teaching hospital allows interns to work on patients under the supervision of doctors, Caddy said.

The teaching salon will be located at 1280 Industrial Ave.

The future of the program will be an expansion into spa services and techniques.

"We're looking to implement these courses in the next couple of years."

The first classes begin Feb. 18, and CNCC has 11 full-time and eight part-time cosmetology students, and 10 part-time nail technician students registered.

Each program has a maximum capacity of 20 students.

An orientation program on the Cosmetology and Nail Technician programs will be held at 7:30 p.m. on Feb. 4 at the Holiday Inn. The event is for anyone with any interest or questions about the new courses. For more information, call Tracy Caddy at 824-1120.